Black
by arctique48
Summary: Black. To the core. Righteous little boy, so certain he can escape what runs within his very blood. Foolish child, you can’t twist who you are.


**Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc belongs to JKR.**

_-_

_Black._

I look into the mirror and I see Black.

_The colour of sunlight burning dark. _

She was right. When she stood at my door, those long years ago, and begged me to return, screamed at me to go home. She told me that I would never be one of them. That no matter how hard I wished for it, I would never be a Potter. I would never be a hero.

_The colour of uncertainty, of definition, of finality. _

She told me she could see my soul. She told me she could see Black.

_It is the colour of harsh reality. _

And now I see it too. As I stand before this mirror in my late parent's bedroom, all I see is them. Everything that ever made me a Gryffindor is gone. Lily and James lie six feet beneath the earth, Remus has his potion to pull him through the full moons, and I am alone. Locked in this chamber of horrors with nothing but memories and ghosts for company. And I have many of both, ghosts… memories… bittersweet and rancid. They haunt my every step.

_Of mystery and grief. _

I walk in the hall and suddenly I am sixteen years old, livid beneath the glare of my banshee mother.

_Black is the colour of funerals and the shadows cast by midnight flames. _

I was a stupid child. Born to the darkness of the midnight skies. Did I think I could escape it? Stars will never play in sunlight, nor will lions flourish in a pit of snakes. Heaven has no place for the children of Hell.

When we discovered our 'inner animals' for our Animagus forms we used to wonder why exactly they were so… James was obvious: Stag, leader of the herd, proud and regal, loyal and fair. But Peter was a mystery then, one Remus and I pondered over for long nights before the dying common room fire, at the time too blind to see what lay right before our eyes… Maybe if we had been more aware then, Harry would not be an orphan, with an escaped convict and a werewolf as his guardians. Wormtail… Rat. Greasy, slimy, too-dumb-for-Slytherin little rat. And Padfoot… we had passed it off as a reflection of my namesake. _How clever!_ Peter had squealed. Sirius Black the jet black dog.

But there was more to it than that. I was a rebellious follower… loyal to the point of sacrifice. Dogs are loyal, they follow and they fight, ever arrogant in the face of danger. Real dogs never tucked tail and ran, and neither did I. Of that small blessing I can be sure… I never ran. But I was never a simple ordinary dog… the Grim which haunted Peter's dreams may have had more meaning than we had thought; an omen. I am cursed, all I love falling into darkness and suffering and death… They say that a dog will always come home. You can beat it with a stick and it will return the following day, eager as ever… And I'm back. Suspended in the darkness to which I was born. I am home.

_Black is the sanctuary of evil and black is purity._

I sit in my father's study and I am three years old. Trembling before his wand point, I had never meant to put Drooble's Best Blowing gum in Cissa's hair…

_Severe. _

I'm not a hero. I never was. Innocent, perhaps. But heroic? Never. For so many years I believed that I had found my route in life, I had found the meaning… for what better reason was there than to be there for your greatest friends? To help them through times of trouble, offer light-hearted jokes when it felt as though the sky would descend on us. Maybe that was all I ever was… A joker. When things got serious I was no use, any history book of the last fifty years holds evidence of my blunder. James and Lily Potter; great martyrs of our time. But were it not for my attempts to help them there would have been no need for their sacrifice… In my heart I know I deserved my sentence.

_Harsh. _

Wandering through the kitchen… That rat of a house elf mutters and curses… I remember when all he did was simper and praise, practically licking the ground my mother walked on.

_Corrupt_

Perhaps that is why it is so clear now. Maybe it was Azkaban that pulled down the mask, allowed me to see what she once did. It is so plain now. Remus thinks the dementors stole my spirit, he thinks they burnt out the light in my eyes; but it is not so… all they did was cast away the lies I had woven for myself… all they did was bare my soul. Decayed. My eyes are hollow.

That is all I am. Black. To the core. Righteous little boy, so certain he can escape what runs within his very blood. I was a foolish child, you can't twist who you are.

I was born a Black, and as a Black I shall die. Whether decaying in this house like my mother did, or dying with insignificance in a battle no one will remember as my father before me… There are no hero's passings for Blacks. A mere breeze on the boundaries of death… but a ripple in the raging torrents of the afterlife. Insignificant shadows in the sands of time.

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